with a pen of
light on the table of his everlasting decrees. A paper copy, in a volume
of silk and gems, was brought down to the lowest heaven by the angel
Gabriel, who, under the Jewish economy, had indeed been despatched
on the most important errands; and this trusty messenger successively
revealed the chapters and verses to the Arabian prophet. Instead of a
perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the
Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet; each revelation
is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion; and all
contradiction is removed by the saving maxim, that any text of Scripture
is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage. The word of God, and
of the apostle, was diligently recorded by his disciples on palm-leaves
and the shoulder-bones of mutton; and the pages, without order or
connection, were cast into a domestic chest, in the custody of one of
his wives. Two years after the death of Mahomet, the sacred volume was
collected and published by his friend and successor Abubeker: the work
was revised by the caliph Othman, in the thirtieth year of the Hegira;
and the various editions of the Koran assert the same miraculous
privilege of a uniform and incorruptible text. In the spirit of
enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet rests the truth of his mission on the
merit of his book; audaciously challenges both men and angels to imitate
the beauties of a single page; and presumes to assert that God alone
could dictate this incomparable performance. [92] This argument is most
powerfully addressed to a devout Arabian, whose mind is attuned to faith
and rapture; whose ear is delighted by the music of sounds; and whose
ignorance is incapable of comparing the productions of human genius.
[93] The harmony and copiousness of style will not reach, in a version,
the European infidel: he will peruse with impatience the endless
incoherent rhapsody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which seldom
excites a sentiment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust, and
is sometimes lost in the clouds. The divine attributes exalt the fancy
of the Arabian missionary; but his loftiest strains must yield to the
sublime simplicity of the book of Job, composed in a remote age, in the
same country, and in the same language. [94] If the composition of the
Koran exceed the faculties of a man to what superior intelligence should
we ascribe the Iliad of Homer, or the Philippics of Demosthenes? In